After 80 years, T's Corner still has plenty of gas

Don't let the gas pumps fool you. T's Corner is more than just an Exxon station with the fortuitous distinction of lying about halfway between Baltimore and North Carolina's Outer Banks.

It's also a fireworks shop. And a lunch counter with a soda fountain that dates to the 1950s. And a tanning salon. And a video rental store with thousands of titles available on actual shelves. And a Greyhound bus stop. And a souvenir stand.

Rodney Mears, owner of T's Corner on Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2016.

Rodney Mears, owner of T's Corner on Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2016.

Staff photo by Ralph Musthaler

In a way, T's Corner is the roadside embodiment of an old piece of investment advice: A diverse portfolio is the key to weathering any economic storm. It's the main reason the establishment has survived to and beyond its 80th anniversary, according to its owner.

"It keeps flow," Rodney Mears said.

Businesses come and go, particularly on the hardscrabble Eastern Shore of Virginia. Industries are few. The geography — lying at the bottom of a peninsula devoid of interstates — doesn't lend itself to much traffic of the just-passing-through variety.

So, Mears and his father before him have been open to new ideas — and investing in them.

Tullie Edward Mears opened a small shop, then known as T's Place, on July 23, 1936. The original building, still in use in the convenience store portion of the structure, dates from 1928, when it was known as Nash's Corner.

But it was under the elder Mears' watch that the store's name became synonymous with the surrounding area. Chincoteague Road forms a T-intersection at Route 13 right in front of the store. But that's not how the gas station got its name.

The actual reason: Tullie Mears preferred to be called "Mr. T" or simply "T." So he named his shop T's Corner. And after a while, folks took to calling the whole area by that name.

"There was nothing here," Rodney Mears said. "He was the only game in town."

It has been granted landmark status by no less of an authority than NASA, which operates Wallops Flight Facility about 6 miles down Chincoteague Road. The travel directions on the facility's website recommend that visitors heading from points south turn right "at the T's-Corner stoplight."

Running a business and raising a family in the throes of the Great Depression, Tullie looked to side ventures to boost his bottom line. First came a drive-in restaurant. Just before World War II, he expanded to a 24-hour taxi service that primarily shuttled Navy personnel between the bus station and the main base.

Year after year, decade after decade, Tullie would work from 6 a.m. to past midnight and rise to do it all again the next day. He took few vacations, and he watched every nickel and dime that came in and went out, his son said.

When he went home — presumably, just to sleep — he didn't have to go far. In 1942, he built a house next door, the place where Rodney grew up with his two brothers.

"I used to get out in cars and talk to people," he said. "I wasn't scared of anybody."

At all times while under control of the Mears family, T's Corner has been a true mom-and-pop shop. Tullie and his wife, Carrie, ran the store for nearly four decades before handing off the reins to Rodney and his wife, Deidra, in 1973.

In 1986, Rodney introduced one of his first marks on the business when he added a video rental store. Thirty years later, Corner Videos is one of the last brick-and-mortar places left where you can browse shelves of videos.

"It was slowing down a lot, and then DVDs came out. That was a shot in the arm," he said. "It's slower now than it was, but we have fans. People come back with their kids."

The son also persuaded the father to sell the family's acreage beyond the store to a developer. That resulted in the Food Lion shopping center that dwarfs the humble corner convenience store.

Tullie continued working at the convenience store, serving as its greeter and troubleshooter just about up to his death in 2003 from a stroke at age 91. Carrie died six years later at 95.

Their house still stands, partially blocking northbound drivers' view of store until they're almost right on top of it. No one has lived in it since Carrie went to live in a nursing home, but there are no plans to tear it down.

Relics, in these parts, are something to be cherished.

That goes for the American Soda Fountain-brand dispenser behind the lunch counter. It's an original from 1957, and it still works.

Unlike modern fountains that can be found in just about any fast-food restaurant, this one must be operated by an employee, who manually mixes the carbonated water and syrup. Customers also get their choice of flavors. But buyer beware: The cherry Coke is far sweeter than any cherry or bottle of Coke.

Mears is 65 years old now but has no plans to retire. He has too much energy to quit, he said, and none of his three grown children are all that interested in taking over the family business.

The store is lined with boxes of fireworks — the "safe and sane" kind that don't shoot up into the air, as Mears puts it. The book collection includes just about every edition in the "Misty of Chincoteague" series. And if a souvenir has the word "Chincoteague" on it, it can probably be found in the gift shop.

"We've got a little bit of everything in here," said Dawn Taylor, who has worked at the store for more than 20 years and is Mears' sister-in-law. "Mr. T used to say, 'If we ain't got it, you don't need it.'"

People apparently need bronzed skin, even in the winter. So through a door off the hallway between the video store and gift shop you will find one of the most incongruous of all the family's side hustles: a tanning bed.

Yet, if you've spent enough time in the stores' claustrophobic aisles, the appliance makes a kind of strange sense. When you've tried everything else under the sun, why not replace the sun, too?